1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a manufacturing method for a liquid drop ejecting head and a manufacturing apparatus therefor, in which particles are blasted onto a substrate provided with mask layers which are patterned in advance and are made of an organic material, thereby etching or sandblasting portions exposed from the mask layers on the substrate surfaces. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for manufacturing an ink ejecting head in which ink drops are ejected for recording an image or the like to a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recording heads of a thermal ink jet printer are manufactured in such a way that driver integrated circuits are formed on a semiconductor substrate such as a silicon substrate; a plurality of heating resistors are formed in the vicinity thereof; individual ink passages that constitute ink passages corresponding to the respective heating resistors are formed above the respective heating resistors; common ink passages to be connected to the individual ink passages are formed; and ink jet nozzles for ejecting ink fed from the individual ink passages as ink drops are further formed.
When supplying ink to a recording head of a thermal ink jet printer, for instance, in the case of a top shooter type where the ink drop is ejected substantially in the perpendicular direction to the silicon substrate, since the supply of the ink to the recording head of the thermal ink jet printer is effected from the back surface side of the silicon substrate, at least one ink supply port that passes through the silicon substrate is formed in the silicon substrate during the above-described manufacturing process. The ink supply port is thus connected to the ink groove which is provided on the top surface side of the silicon substrate and is in communication with the above-described common ink passage.
In this case, since each of the ink supply ports and the ink grooves to be formed has a large depth, the ink supply ports passing through the silicon substrate or the ink grooves connected to the ink supply ports are commonly formed by sandblasting from the top and back surface sides of the silicon substrate in view of the processing speed. As is well known in the sandblasting method, a resist made of an organic material is used as a mask layer in the area other than the area where the etching is to be effected, and particles having a small diameter are blasted at a predetermined speed on the silicon substrate and the like, to thereby perform mechanical etching of the silicon substrate and the like. Such a sandblasting method is described in JP 2000-127402A.